Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 333 posts

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#171

Post by EasyTiger_ »

kop316 wrote: post #59
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #56

It is not just foreign governments using paid trolls. Apparently Hilary Clinton used paid trolls against Bernie Sanders in 2016. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-troll... >Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton…

Yep. That was really bad on Reddit during the election. If you even broached certain topics about Hillary, it was downvoted/flagged right away. Then the day after the election, Those topics actually came up.

I mean it’s actually worse now since 2016.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#172

Post by XorNot »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #54
nkozyra wrote: post #43

This really is a critical juncture for the internet; the moment wherein the democratization of information has empowered those with the resources to overwhelm the signal with noise. I wish I saw a way out.

Google has largely solved the spam problem for end users. What I can't figure out is why platforms like Facebook and Twitter couldn't mark these sort of posts as, essentially, spam, by the same sort of rules and heuristics as email spam. Why can't they look at the metadata of verified troll-farm-generated clickbait/junk/spam/fake news, and make their own filters, and demote that content? Simple. Because they're makin…

Go talk to an average person about a subject outside their career expertise.

No matter how "smart" they seem like they should be you'll get some of the worst, lowest quality opinions imaginable.

Most people do not know how to say "I'm not really sure about that". The absolute worst thing you can do south the average person is ask them to think about a new concept, and the internet is a medium which puts a box in front of you and says "have your say".

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#173

Post by EasyTiger_ »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #153
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given how pro-Hillary and anti-Sanders that sub became overnight I was there for that too. It literally was flip of a switch speed. One of the big turning points I saw regarding the election.

It was EXTREMELY pro-Sanders for a very long time. The entirety of reddit was extremely pro-Sanders. I have to believe reddit owners/admins were complicit in this shift because it was so overwhelming and even today, dissent is extremely difficult. The most notable pro-Sanders sub outside his boring official campaign one(chapotraphouse) is quarantined.

Oh they knew exactly what was going in. Reddit suddenly became militantly pro-establishment and a much nastier place overall. I think the massive amount of Bernie enthusiasm scared some people, Bernie stuff was constantly hitting the front page.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#174

Post by mc3 »

dr-detroit wrote: post #50
dpc_pw wrote: post #31

The solution is not regulate it. The solution is to stop pretending like social media have anything to do with reality.

This. Social Media should be avoided its worse for you than cancer.

Wait... HN is Social Media. Well it's not as in your face as FB, but at the minimum it influences people, and anyone can create an account and respond, and lots of people are reading.

A lot of work goes into preventing bots etc on HN, but it is still not immune because the prize of getting your opinion or article read by the tech crowd is big.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#175

Post by nitwit005 »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #54
nkozyra wrote: post #43

This really is a critical juncture for the internet; the moment wherein the democratization of information has empowered those with the resources to overwhelm the signal with noise. I wish I saw a way out.

Google has largely solved the spam problem for end users. What I can't figure out is why platforms like Facebook and Twitter couldn't mark these sort of posts as, essentially, spam, by the same sort of rules and heuristics as email spam. Why can't they look at the metadata of verified troll-farm-generated clickbait/junk/spam/fake news, and make their own filters, and demote that content? Simple. Because they're makin…

If you manually type up an email with false political claims and send it to a gmail/yahoo mail account, it'll likely go through.

The spam blocking they do is designed to eliminate unwanted bulk mailings from automated systems, not some one off bit of content from an individual.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#176

Post by RobertRoberts »

Teever wrote: post #142
RobertRoberts wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will see "we need nuclear power because it's the greenest/most renewable/etc... energy" type posts dispersed all through social media almost anywhere there's a discussion about climate change, renewable energy, etc... Even if the original topic was only tangentially related it will get changed. A post with puppy photos can turn into a climate change discussion because "nuclear power is so green". It's so common n…

Let's run with your idea and let's say that there are clandestine efforts to promote the idea of nuclear power generation in the public -- cui bono? Who benefits? Are there any major initiatives in the nuclear industry? Are any new plants starting to be built? All I've seen is a bunch of plants that have horrible cost overruns and no fixed time line for being finished. That doesn't sound like something that you'd wan…

I don't know, but maybe discussing it will bring some light to this subject? Maybe a system/method to determine who is a professional troll?

-----

Pro-Troll Filter: (first draft)

1. Is the commenter able to rationally discuss the downsides of their position?

NO? Possibly a pro-troll or an irrational comment.

2. Is the commenter willing to admit past errors in implementing of their ideal solution, and also consider the same errors could occur again? (ie, no true Scotsman logical fallacy)

NO? Possibly a pro-troll or an irrational comment.

3. Is the commenter willing to look at and/or discuss real data, even if it contradicts their position?

NO? Possibly a pro-troll or an irrational comment.

4. Does the commenter devolve into ad hominem attacks?

YES? Possibly a pro-troll or an irrational comment.

----

Irrationality note:

People have bad days and can act irrationally at any time. But I have found that when someone is unable/unwilling to admit error tries to support an idea based on limited information will devolve into irrational comments when challenged with counter arguments/questions. Not sure how this will help with pro-troll filtering, but it's more data to consider.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#177

Post by celeritascelery »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #54
nkozyra wrote: post #43

This really is a critical juncture for the internet; the moment wherein the democratization of information has empowered those with the resources to overwhelm the signal with noise. I wish I saw a way out.

Google has largely solved the spam problem for end users. What I can't figure out is why platforms like Facebook and Twitter couldn't mark these sort of posts as, essentially, spam, by the same sort of rules and heuristics as email spam. Why can't they look at the metadata of verified troll-farm-generated clickbait/junk/spam/fake news, and make their own filters, and demote that content? Simple. Because they're makin…

It’s easy to see when a new email account tries to send thousands of emails to people they don’t know.

But how do you tell the difference between a political activist who just joined Twitter and a troll account? You seem to think this is a trivial problem so I am curious to see your answer.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#178

Post by stef25 »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #54
nkozyra wrote: post #43

This really is a critical juncture for the internet; the moment wherein the democratization of information has empowered those with the resources to overwhelm the signal with noise. I wish I saw a way out.

Google has largely solved the spam problem for end users. What I can't figure out is why platforms like Facebook and Twitter couldn't mark these sort of posts as, essentially, spam, by the same sort of rules and heuristics as email spam. Why can't they look at the metadata of verified troll-farm-generated clickbait/junk/spam/fake news, and make their own filters, and demote that content? Simple. Because they're makin…

Apparently FB now prevents certain posts from spreading, making them only visible to the author. An example is one containing "Alex Jones". It's like a shadow ban, except FB will notify the user.

Naval Ravikant made a very good point on Joe Rogan where he said that as soon as social media platforms decided to censor content they started a war they can't win because they end up having to chose sides. He said their position should be (recalling from memory here) "we're a publishing platform not responsible for the content that's being published. If you have a warrant, we'll take it down, otherwise it's hands off". Censoring, demoting or stopping the spread, it's basically the same thing.

They absolutely are making money on the garbage as well, as you said.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#179

Post by ineedasername »

inetknght wrote: post #96
ineedasername wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one of them is illegal. Also, the foreign variety advances the possibly incompatible goals of the foreign country while the domestic version tends to be between individuals with differing but legitimate visions of how the country should be run.

> Well, one of them is illegal. I would argue that both of them are illegal.

I could be wrong, but I don't think it's illegal to have paid shills talking up one candidate or smearing another.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#180

Post by stef25 »

braindead_in wrote: post #158
nomel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re trivializing the difficulty in categorizing the low quality, and extremely brief, comments of social media. Go look at a political subreddit, or some controversial tweet. There’s little conversation or context. Most users could be bots. Google often has the advantage of having hard (url) or soft (product/key word mention) links that point to something extremely rare and “unimportant”. Everyone is bitch…

Thee larger problem is factual accuracy. With all the propaganda going around, it is hard to find the truth. Any attempt to classify such opinions will inevitably further a propaganda. As someone said, we live in strange timeline where comedians are more trustworthy than politicians.

FB does work with 3rd party fact checkers. We should be able to trust people from places like Reuters to remain fairly neutral.
Post reply on HN